A long, long time ago free web hosts were the coolest thing on the internet
and most, if not all, non-commercial websites were hosted by one. You don't
hear that much about free hosting anymore so I though it would be interesting
to check out what has happened to the free web hosts that I have used.

After digging around in the back of my head I remembered 6 free web hosts I have used. It must have been around the year 2000. The list is:

20m

Crosswinds

Prohosting

Terrashare

Redrival

VR9

I have visited the website of each of these web hosts and tried to find out
how they are doing today.

- One of the three plans highlighted on the front page leads you to another web host through an affiliate link

- Some presented plans are "outdated"

- Google ads

- Website is designed as spiderbait (many similar pages, little content)

- Many links to other websites.

Based on the appearance of the website I wouldn't recommend to sign up
for a 20m hosting plan. Outdated plans, 3rd party ads and the links
to other websites gives the impression that the website is there to make
money on ads and increase pagerank for other sites, not to sell web hosting.

Crosswinds looks like a regular hosting provider now, targeting normal
webmasters. Their website isn't very well polished but besides that, they
fit right into the overselling budget hosting market. Not free hosting anymore.

Still free hosting, paid hosting from www.prohosting.com as before
Reasonable plan, uses free hosting to attract paid customers.
Not unlike what they used to have, except the free hosting plan is
very limited and probably meant to attract customers to their paid services.

Paid and free web hosting. Mostly for the free market and those who want
just a little more.

- Amateurish website

- $1.99/month, too cheap

+ Reasonable size for the money, 100mb

+ only 2mb on free accounts (so it's not too expensive for them to provide free hosting)

- 2mb is enough only for very small websites.

- Blank help page

- Advertise with us-page.

- help page is empty and forum page is broken

The website has too many weak points to make a decent impression, and does not give the impression of a reliable web host.

VR9

- Gone

Check out http://vr9.com if you want to see for yourself. I do not put up links to
"domain parking/advertisement" pages.

Terrashare

- Gone

Instead of regular free hosting they tried to pay the webmasters by sharing income
from ads on their sites but as time has shown, that didn't go so well. The url is http://www.terrashare.com (currently a domain parking/advertising page)

Conclusion

So, of those 6 web hosts, 4 are still alive, of which 2 appears to be alive and well. The result of this step back to the past can be summarized like this: